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I LANSTON TYPE COMPANY I GERALD GIAMPA I
¶ GERALD GIAMPA, PRINTER sitting on the ol' Cobblestone Press church pew in his 323 in Cambie Street location. In these days he was starving. He had several poetry books in progress and had to wait to finish.
'Image Nation 13 & 14 by poet Robin Blaser was finished first and much to Giampa's surprise people not only read but bought poetry.
This was good news. Giampa was suffering from the "production impatience" of the Alcuin Society which prefered to ruin a book that had been in the works for over a year. They seemed to confuse a "good deal" with devine "slavery."
Cobblestone Press Society was formed and bought most of Cobblestone books. Very few books ended up in Vancouver.
In any event Giampa lived from printing nothing but books for several years before he started taking on lucrative commercial printing.
¶ GERALD GIAMPA SAYS: 'No one was more surprised than me, I was a book designer, not a job printer. Seems everyone just started to want their stationery to look like literature.
A designer, artist Errol Etienne, RCA sent several million dollars of projects through my plant. One job alone brought in $89,000.00.
Our first job on a new C& P hand-fed platen was for MacMillan & Bloedel. It was over three hundred thousand impressions on very thick paper. Now try sticking that on your hand fed. There was so much paper I couldn't answer my phone.'
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¶ THE WATCH WAS PROBABLY A STAGE PROP. Giampa never wore rings or watches around machinery and didn't let his employees either. It was the one thing an employee would get fired instantly for. There was never a single accident in his plants. 'Maybe a paper cut at worst.'